We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities

Join ESEA Sisters and Haymarket Books for an evening of intergenerational, interdiscipilinary discussion and performance, engaging with the legacies, presents, and futures of Black and Asian feminist solidarities in Britain and beyond, chaired by Lola Olufemi.

Bringing together organisers, writers, poets, artists, and theorists, this expansive discussion will explore the victories gained, historic errors, and ongoing challenges in the struggle toward a truly liberatory horizon for all; an exercise in a radical, collective imagination.

Drawing from the recent anthology, We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black & Asian Feminist Solidarities (Haymarket, 2025), edited by Rachel Kuo, Jaimee A. Swift and TD Tso, this long-table conversation will explore historical and contemporary organising toward liberation, from the work of groups like OWAAD and Brixton Black Women's Group, to the Grunwick Strike 50 years on, to ongoing fights for workers' rights, climate justice, international solidarity movements, and the specificities of queer, trans, undocumented and marginalised struggles. 

"Freedom is indivisible, and either we are working for freedom or you are working for the sake of your self-interests and I am working for mine."
- June Jordan

Featuring contributions from:

• Lola Olufemi (chair)
• Stella Dadzie
• Shareefa Energy
• Francesca Humi
• Abeera Khan
• Sara Bafo
• Pear Nuallak

Following our discussion and some performances, we will end the night with an open-mic for poetry readings and other contributions! 

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Accessibility info:

• Reference Point is accessible via a ramp to the right-hand side of the main entrance on 2 Arundel Street and there is an accessible toilet.
• Most seating will be on benches without back support. There will be some limited more supported seating: please aim to arrive on time if you can if you need this, and/or let us know in advance by contacting us at uk@haymarketbooks.org 
• If you are showing signs of illness, please take into consideration the health and wellbeing of others before you decide to attend, and do not attend if you are showing symptoms of COVID-19 or other viruses. We will have masks available and encourage attendees to wear masks where possible.

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Dr. Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer, researcher and Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work focuses on the utility of the political imagination in the textual and visual cultures of radical social movements, examining the role cultural production plays in materialist resistance and collective conceptualisations of futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021), the forthcoming Against Literature (2026) and a member of 'bare minimum', an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. 

ESEA Sisters is an international community of women, trans, non-binary and genderqueer folk of East and South East Asian (ESEA) heritage

Haymarket Books is a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago, publishing books that contribute to struggles for social and economic justice, including on abolition, Palestine, anti-imperialism, feminism, Black history, poetry, and much more.